Vocational education in Maine is at a treacherous crossroad. There appears to be a movement to discredit the effectiveness of the state’s vocational education programming at the high school level.

This idea is glaring when reviewing the final report of the State’s Task Force on Increasing Efficiency and Equity in the Use of K-12 Education Resources as submitted to the governor earlier this year.

The group makes several recommendations, including one that suggests transforming the state’s 27 vocational high schools into voluntary 13th-year programs. With the difficulty involved in keeping kids in school today, it’s hard to imagine what the dropout rate could reach if these programs become an addition to a high school diploma.

It is widely believed that without a vocational structure within the public school system, many students would opt out of high school altogether.

Another report prepared as a joint effort by the Maine Development Foundation and the Maine Community Foundation, titled “Greater Expectations: College as a Right and Responsibility for all Maine People,” talks about expanding college opportunities for all Mainers, but fails to speak to the Maine residents who will choose not to attend college for one reason or another.

In addition to substantial on-the-job-training, many not bound for a collegiate stint have chosen other professional development opportunities, such as seminars specific to their respective vocation and safety and skill enhancement training. We allow several professional occupations to access these “non-college” venues for their continuing educational requirements. One would expect as long as training adequately improved a person’s skills, that it would be embraced, regardless of what that person does for a living or what level of a formal education they have acquired. Any other standard would seem hypocritical.

This report also cites the exodus of our college-educated young people who are leaving the state for better paying jobs elsewhere. What this and other reports like it fail to promote, however, is appreciation for those young people who choose a hands-on vocational career.

You know them, the young people who chose to remain in Maine after high school, oftentimes starting families and establishing homesteads in the general area where they too were raised. Maybe some of them are relatives of yours or good friends of the family. They come from diverse backgrounds and share a variety of common skills; some are craftspeople, others work in culinary arts, forest products and a host of other related vocational fields important to the future of Maine.

We hire these talented, hardworking folks to help us every day, and we pay them for their products and services, another important spoke in the state’s economic wheel. Many of these fine, taxpaying, non-college graduates are our community and civic leaders.

Challenges to these and other similar reports should not be misconstrued as being anti-college. As a society struggling to compete globally, we should encourage people to seek higher education as part of their lifetime achievements, if, indeed, that is the route they chose to go.

Undoubtedly, for a certain sector of Maine’s population, a college education, or even basic courses within the framework of most degree programs, would offer measurable benefits.

One could argue, however, that there are a large number of good residents from generations past, present and future that already have been, or are destined to be, just as worthy of success here in Maine without that college diploma hanging on the wall. This premise supports the simple belief that a college education should be presented only as an option, not a requirement to be considered a good and productive citizen of this great state. By giving even the smallest hint that somehow a person who does not have a college education has less worth in society than someone who does, sends a clear message of arrogance to a segment of our state’s population that has historically been the primary drivers and backbone of our economy.

I urge anyone who is not already connected with their local vocational high school to do so. I can assure you, if you take the time to learn more about this programming you will understand why we need to protect and enhance this type of education.

These programs are doing an outstanding job at preparing our young people for careers. To those students who have chosen a vocational career, it is your right to enjoy it to its fullest and this state’s responsibility to respect and honor you for doing so.

Tim C. Walton is president of Associated Builders and Contractors Inc. of Maine, a construction trade association. He lives in Fayette and holds a bachelors degree in public administration from the University of Maine system.

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